FINAL FANTASY XIII CHARACTERS

Check out that shit-eating grin.

My roommate recently got Final Fantasy XIII and as something of a voyeur (I freely admit it!) I enjoy watching her play.  It took her a while to decide on her purchase – putting down $50+ on a game that you’re not sure you’re going to enjoy, particularly when you’re a poorly paid college student who has to pay rent, car payments, for groceries (well, half of the above), is something hard to do.  This is multiplied when the games have recently been hit and miss – Final Fantasy XII, for instant, earned my roommate’s ire by having a “completely incomprehensible storyline” and “a bunch of idiots for characters.”  But after we had talked to a lot of our mutual friends who had purchased it at the midnight opening and after reading quite a few reviews,  both good and bad, she purchased the game and has settled in to play it while I watch and do my homework.

One thing that immediately caught our attention concerned the characters within the story. I mean, any game, movie, or novel is going to have generic stereotyped characters – so when people were complaining about that in the reviews (and by god, were they), I didn’t pay much attention.  However, both the roommate and I had heard several people complaining about “the black guy” and “the kid.”

The issue was, when she started playing, both of us thought…those were some of the more tolerable characters.

I mean, not to say that the others were annoying.  The only character we intensely and immediately hated was Vanille, the cutesy/clumsy/polite/optimistic chick. I mean, POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING I DON’T KNOW, after wandering around Pulse for two hours SURROUNDED BY  CRYSTALS THE WHOLE TIME, Vanille brightly notes: “LOOK AT ALL THE CRYSTALS!”  My roommate wryly noted: “Oh, really? There are crystals? I never noticed.” Now just imagine a nigh-running commentary from Vanille with inane comments just like this, and we want to end up killing her.

Otherwise, all the characters are tolerable, and we actually end up liking them.  One that we were particularly shocked by – due to he fact that he quickly achieved the status as our favorite – was Sazh, the aforementioned “black guy.” Yeah, he’s very stereotypical black guy – in fact, I’d dare say he’s so stereotypical he actually sidesteps into, pardon me, “wigga” territory.  Sure, he never breaks down into PIZZ-DIZZLE and DYN-O-MITE, but he rides close to the line. But off that, he’s absolutely great to have around. First of all, I don’t know, maybe it’s the girl in us, but the baby chocobo he keeps in his afro (yes, if you’ve been living under a rock, he has a baby chocobo in his afro) is absolutely adorable and makes us glee and giggle every time it appears.  But the real and true reason we love him is he says exactly what we’re thinking.

Say at the beginning.  The game had played a long in depth cutscene immediately miring us into a plot neither of us understood. At one point, a character said…god, I can’t remember, but something so littered with “l’cie” and “fal’cie” that I looked to my roommate and said “What are they talking about?” Immediately, Sazh reiterated my question with “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!” At some point later, Sazh said something along the lines of “I have no idea what’s going on, but I’m in!” I can get behind that.   I respect a character who has no idea what’s going on but still will go along with it.

Bethany, the roommate, hasn’t finished the game by far.  Recently we were introduced to Fang (I think, it was so brief I can’t remember), and we’re hovering between tentatively liking her and being vaguely concerned that she might be going the way of Vanille (as in: an annoying character we roll our eyes at).

But the roommate and I are both easy to please, and considering the main complaint we heard from all of our mutual friends concerned the state of the characters, as stated, they’re not bad. Sazh? Pretty awesome and relatable. Snow’s likeable. Lightning is even likeable if you liked angsty-Cloud in Final Fantasy VII (only NOW he has boobs and, like, pink hair!). My roommate loves Hope because he’s “angsty”. Sure, they’re nothing new or special, nor do they break stereotypes, but you can get along with them, and a game is practically unplayable without a likeable cast.

Now we just have to get to the gameplay rather than five minutes of walking followed by three hours of cutscenes.

-maq

Tags: Final Fantasy, PS3, Xbox 360

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 24th, 2010 at 3:30 pm and is filed under Editorial, Reviews, Video Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.